|IT has been said that the Russian ballet makes a vivid and brutal
appeal to the senses, and certainly there is some truth in this as
regards the ballets of which the artist Bakst is the guiding spirit. The
old saying that you cannot see the wood for the trees may be borrowed to
express a criticism. You cannot see color for the colors in some Bakst
ballets. Yet even Bakst sometimes helps to aid that impression of a
visitation divine which Nijinsky in his own person produces. You will
see that Miss Pamela Colman Smith has given what some may think a
disproportionate amount of space to her studies of "Les Sylphides,"
"Le Carnaval," and "Le Spectre de la Rose." I think she was, perhaps
unconsciously, more strongly attracted by these three dance poems (for
dance poems they should be called rather than ballets) because of their
greater wealth in the immaterial.
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